UN urged to press Govt. for action

The Committee for Protecting the Rights of the Prisoners (CPRP) urged the United Nations (UN) to pressurize the Government of Sri Lanka to mete out justice to the 27 victims of the Welikada Prison riot in 2012.

Chairman of the Committee, Attorney-at-Law Senaka Perera said that the said massacre was an instance where no relief had been provided domestically.

Members of the Committee including eyewitness to the said incident, former political prisoner Sudesh Nandimal along with parents, families, relatives and friends of the slain 27 will be handing over a detailed document containing all the available information about the said massacre and the subsequent apathetic responses of the Government in this regard, to the Compound of the UN in Sri Lanka this week.

They will also be handing over copies of the said document to all the ambassadors, high commissioners and consular generals of the foreign diplomatic missions in the country.
The incumbent Government is yet to place in the public domain the report of the three-member committee appointed by them and neither have they taken steps to act on the said committee’s recommendations. Nothing is publicly known about the status of the so-called investigations conducted by law enforcement agencies and authorities into the massacre.

“What we want is not necessarily that the matter concerning the incident be taken up at the UN Human Rights Council sessions presently underway in Geneva but that it is essential that the UN intervenes as this is a local case where nothing let alone justice has been done by the Government,” he remarked. (RLJ)